I also looked at Fonality. I got equipment quotes from Avaya for IP Office, an NEC reseller, Samsung, even rolling my own with Asterisk. We eventually settled on a completely hosted solution.

The company we chose came in, setup on their servers, gave us phones, and away we went. Kind of like Vonage, but in a much more useable sense.

Yes, the "price" isn't exactly the same. But for decentralizing, it's a godsend. Your remote workers just plug in the phone and they are up and running. The company handles all the IMAC stuff, you just make sure you have internet.

I got mine through a local company here in Texas, but there is also a national company we were looking at, http://www.geckotechllc.com/ out of Chicago.

I also looked at Fonality. I got equipment quotes from Avaya for IP Office, an NEC reseller, Samsung, even rolling my own with Asterisk. We eventually settled on a completely hosted solution.

The company we chose came in, setup on their servers, gave us phones, and away we went. Kind of like Vonage, but in a much more useable sense.

Yes, the "price" isn't exactly the same. But for decentralizing, it's a godsend. Your remote workers just plug in the phone and they are up and running. The company handles all the IMAC stuff, you just make sure you have internet.

I got mine through a local company here in Texas, but there is also a national company we were looking at, http://www.geckotechllc.com/ out of Chicago.

1st Post

I am surprised no one here mentioned trixbox CE (free edition). Honestly, it is very stable, (the 2.6.2.3 branch anyway) and we have been using it in our production system for years. The Aastra 675xi IP Phones have some of the best integration with it including visual voice mail, presence, and even the ability to hot desk with ease. If you have queues, you agents can even log into and out of the queues all on screen.

If anyone has any specific questions about it, feel free to ask. My company has been deploying these (as well as other customer Asterisk solutions) for several years with great customer feedback.

We migrated to Speakeasy a couple of years ago to replace an aging Merlin legend and have never looked back.

We have 10 extensions in our CA office and 1 in my house in WA, and the service works like a charm. the only issue we have had was with call quality when our Wimax Internet connection was overloaded (just as any VOIP service would have).

They are running a promo right now where if you sign up you get free phones which could save you some $$$

If you have any questions about how they are to deal with or the setup please ask, I couldn't be more happy with the service (both functionally and from a service standpoint).

There will be other options with are cheaper, but I didn't feel comfortable going with the lowest bidder for voice (some of them just didn't ask enough questions about our Infrastructure to make me think they were going to worry about how good call quality would be).

I'm implementing 3cx right now and really like it. I know there are other solutions but this one has been very easy to pick up and manage within the limited amount of time I have to spend on the project.

Switchvox is a more user friendly product than any of the canned Asterisk distros: Trixbox, Elastix, PiaF, AstNow, etc. that use FreePBX. We have worked with most over the years, and as Scott said, Elastix is a good solid choice. I would recommend the O'reilly Asterisk book for anyone thinking about using Asterisk. The curse of these canned systems is that they are fairly east to "get working" without understanding how.. and that can lead to problems later.

What ever you do. If your company depends on its phones and you like keeping your job. DON'T go with a hosted VOIP solution.

We have and I have regretted it from day one. Stick with your Switchvox, Avaya, NEC, Mitel, Samsungs, etc, with either a PRI at the offices (or at least one office) or SIP trunking.

I've had nightmares from my hosted VOIP experiences

Also, for those that don't know this. Some (not all, please confirm before you use them) of these hosted solutions are not governed by the FCC or the PLC (I think I have the acronym wrong on that one) so if you port your numbers to them... they don't have to give them back.